Rome

This is probably more than simply obvious, but this city is huge. Walking around is difficult, the metro system has just two lines, and the bus routes are like the Gordian knot. And it's all urban, so unless you eat somewhere that caters to tourists or wealthy folks, the restaurant you go has no problem selling you a Coke with your pizza.

I have been to the house of God. The Musei Vaticani was -- like most other historic museums -- not actually built with the museum crowd in mind. Very few people say, "Hey. Build me a castle. Make it good and defensible, but with a baroque architectural feel. Oh, and just in case they turn it into a museum in four hundred years, add some redundant hallways and make the rooms extra big. And more bathrooms." It was still fantastic. Especially the Museo Pio-Clementino, which is the largest collection of ancient sculpture in the world.

Yes, the Sistine Chapel was amazing, but it's really hard to appreciate it when you're elbow-to-elbow with two hundred people all staring in different directions. I do appreciate the fact that Michaelangelo pained his own flayed skin in the hands of Saint Bartholomew in "The Last Judgment," a wall piece in the chapel. He didn't really want to do all the work anyway, but it's hard to say no to a pope. Especially if he's a Medici (but I don't really know if he was).

I enjoyed the Castel Sant'Angelo, rededicated to the Archangel Michael after he appeared just before a plague ended in Rome. (It was originally Hadrian's mausoleum, then a fortress, then a prison.)

What I really liked were Augustus' Mausoleum and the Pantheon. The mausoleum was grassed over by centuries of time, and little more than a raised hill with a path around it. But there were still stones, and those stones were still old as can be, and I still knew an emperor was buried here. If he's lucky, he still remains. (I say that only because the Venetians stole Saint Mark's body from Constantinople... no kidding.) And the Pantheon was started by Augustus, finished by Hadrian, and to this day we have no idea how they made the damn dome. Staring up through the hole in the middle of it is like looking into the Eye of God. Add to that the fact that during certain celestial events, the sun will shine directly down through it, and the floor of the place was once used to chart astrological movements. Very, very cool. You just have to ignore the fact that now it's a kinda lame basilica. Just walk outside, a good ways away, turn around, and gape at the sheer size of the thing. Hadrian once boasted that he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble. Looking at the Pantheon, it's hard to argue with him.

Just one more day in Rome. I know, it sucks, but this is an expensive place, and I think I might just be able to manage to get to the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, and the Palatine Hill tomorrow. Like I'm travelling back in time. Now when I see HBO's "Rome," I'll be able to say, "I've been there... except I remember a McDonald's in the background."